Delivery truck stolen carrying 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks

If someone approaches you on the street and offers you a Kindle Fire that’s been upgraded to include front and rear cameras, walk away quickly: it’s probably a stolen BlackBerry PlayBook. Thieves in Indiana jacked a semi load of RIM’s tablets worth about $1.7 million. Of course, if you apply RIM’s recent price cut, the truck was really only worth about $750,000 or so. Either way, it’s yet another kick in the pants for RIM.

The stolen truck was headed to Canada, where the PlayBook has been selling like hotcakes at $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model. Finding the PlayBook in stock even at major retailers like Walmart and Future Shop has become a somewhat tricky task in recent weeks. Putting the theft into perspective, this isn’t necessarily terrible news for RIM. They recently reported taking nearly a half-billion-dollar bath on the seven inch tablet at their Q3 2011 earnings report to shareholders — so a million or so in lost inventory isn’t really a big deal.

Police are still looking for leads in the case, but one thing’s for certain: this caper definitely wasn’t pulled off by the duo who have been robbing Columbia students of their smartphones. They’re into Apple devices only, so they wouldn’t have given a truck full of BlackBerry hardware a second look.

As someone who was once offered a set of Klipsch Synergy speakers at a red light for $100, I’ve got to wonder how much a $199 PlayBook would sell for. $25, perhaps?